A male blackbird looking round, singing and preening in a lakeside alder tree at Perton. As he moved around, the stiff breeze was catching and lifting his feathers.
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Male blackbird in an alder tree
Yellow crown imperial fritillary (Fritillaria imperialis) flower from yet another of the front gardens along East Castle Street, Bridgnorth.
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Mining bees, different species
Mining bees, solitary bees which make their individual homes by excavating small holes in the ground (check places like lawns). There’s at least two species of miner bees here. The iNaturalist pattern-matching IDs them as a chocolate mining bee (Andrena scotica), a grey-patched mining bee (Andrena nitida), and as unspecified type of mining bee. All these IDs are unconfirmed.
Jack by the hedge, otherwise known as garlic mustard. It does indeed smell faintly of garlic, with this apparently also true of the taste. It’s a hedgerow plant which some people include in salads (pick the leaves before the plant flowers).
It’s also an important food plant for some butterflies, especially orange tips and green-veined whites.
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First goslings, West Park
The first of the waterfowl on West Park lake to produce young this year is a pair of greylag geese. The goslings looked recently hatched the day we noticed them: probably the previous day rather than earlier that morning.
There were six goslings. Five were stomping ankle-deep in a muddy puddle, the sixth being a bit more adventurous. The parents were keeping a wary eye on us, even though we were taking care to stay well back from them.
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Whitebeam slowly opening, West Park
Leaves and flowers slowly opening on one of the West Park whitebeam trees. The first picture was taken almost two weeks before the other two.